AGRICULTURAL SITUATION AND OPPORTUNITY 149 



of our workers to engage in industry, trade and manufac- 

 ture, while the other one-third produces the food to feed 

 all. 



Another and a reflex result of this condition of over 

 production and consequent cheap food, was a falling of 

 land values, more especially in the older East and South, 

 where the farms had been longer settled and hence the land 

 longer used. This went so far in some parts of the coun- 

 try as to cause the abandonment of much of the rougher, 

 poorer and least productive land in these regions. Banks 

 compelled to foreclose mortgages acquired numbers of these 

 poorer farms. This tended to break down their confidence 

 in the business of farming, which later had its effect in the 

 impairment of the farmers' credit in these sections, and 

 from which it is only now beginning to recover. 



THE REACTION 



It was of course inevitable that these conditions would 

 eventually tend to correct themselves as they did. The 

 opening of the twentieth century saw a gradual rise of 

 prices which in the latter part of the last decade the world 

 war brought to a level never before reached in the history 

 of the United States, although the farmers' purchasing 

 power did not show relatively as much increase. The farm- 

 er 's economic situation, which had been gradually improv- 

 ing since the beginning of the new century, was still further 

 ameliorated by the war prices, and he was heartened and 

 rendered much more able to cope with his growing prob- 

 lems of infertility, insect and disease control and marketing 

 and distribution. 



A growing consciousness of the problem of the farms 

 and of the public dependence upon and obligation toward 

 agriculture was beginning to be apparent at the opening 



